Good, foundational research is key to the success of any project. In Element B, Edison Co. looked to establish the market space and prior solutions for the problem they had recently committed to solving. This certainly was comparable to an investment in the future; Edison Co. looked to learn from those already occupying the space, and see what of those solutions could be improved.

Regardless of the industry, regardless of the problem at hand, and regardless of the target market, it is important that key stakeholders be informed on the intents of the company. The problem Edison Co. will address is as follows: The average alarm clock millions of Americans place at their bedside relies loud and disruptive sound-based stimuli to wake one from sleep in the morning, resulting in long-lasting sleep inertia.

No good product was designed in the absence of research, and thus, Element B addresses exactly that: identifying previously-established solutions that could provide some ideas to our own product. Generally, research regarding existing solutions was completed online marketplaces such as Amazon. Through this process, Edison Co. hunted down products they had seen before, searching for promising options across a number of sites. Patent research was done using a similar method, but typically with the USPTO search tool. Google patents was occasionally used as a search tool as well, and was almost always used to view the patents due to the less-than-ideal USPTO web document viewer. Whether subconscious or not, throughout the course of this patent research, a clustering approach was applied. The team would find a patent of interest, and then through either the references section or particular features of interest, search for related ideas until several had been viewed.

Featured below are the patents deemed most noteworthy and influential to the design thought process. In principle, learning will always be primarily comprised of iterating upon the ideas of others. While patents are usually quite far from refined market products, their far-reaching and ambitious nature allows for the emergence of truly promising, unfiltered ideas. Edison Co. began Patent Research in mid-November on the 19th, and it carried through December 8th.

Not all key products are patented, however, and one of the best ways to learn is to study from market success. Enter Existing Solutions Research. The main goal behind existing solutions research was to feature some of the most notable and unique products found within the alarm-clock (or general wakeup solutions) market. Given that alarm clocks tend to be pretty one-dimensional, a lot of the patents found in the previous step were more theoretical sleep-aid devices. Thus, in existing solutions research, Edison Co. wanted to find concrete, tried-and-true solutions to help you wake up in the morning. The group began this process on the 1st of December, and wrapped up on the 6th of December (with the edition of a product on the 14th).

To see the entirety of the existing solutions research, view the document below.

With all these solutions in place, the group (starting on the December 10th) turned to the Similar Solutions Matrix for analysis. The goal behind the Similar Solutions Matrix was to develop and understanding of what the group was looking for in a product, and what made those products successful. The process was completed on December 15th. How did the different products line up? Several key traits will be explained in the following paragraph.

To start, it was the Sunrise Alarm Clock (Figure 12) that ranked as the number one product in the comparison. This makes sense, as the clock delivered on pretty much everything Edison Co. indicated in the problem statement. It could be wirelessly controlled, it used increasing light stimuli to slowly wake the user before the alarm period, and featured a variety of potential alarm sounds, many of which were quite peaceful. The product mostly lost points on cost and visual aesthetics, so an idea for improvement was suggested. The main concept was that the sunrise-simulating lighting could be incorporated with a ceiling light to create a less obtrusive and more immersive system.

As a sort of pseudo-conclusion, it is worth comparing products in the view of specific categories. While few products ranked well in weather-compatibility (definitely a specific market, so expected), most were effective at waking, even if it not in a particularly elegant manner. Usually it was the lack of jarringness and light-based stimuli that set a product apart. If a product was able to incorporate both in a natural means, it generally ended up ranking well. To Edison Co, this affirmed the effectiveness of a matrix, as the company's problem focuses on gently waking the user.

Edison Co. began Element B with a pretty good idea of what would be necessary to solve the problem: a gentle alarm clock that still effectively wakes up the user, probably with some sort of light stimuli. This was confirmed by the high-ranking patents and products in the decisions matrix, which was incredibly exciting for the team. The repeated use of biometric data throughout the successful patents even inspired Edison Co. to consider this as a future design element. Upon moving to existing solutions research, however, the group encountered some flaws. While they were really excited by the creative innovations such as Alarmy and Ruggie, most of the products were rather jarring; it was about getting the user up at any cost. This is the near-antithesis of the philosophy the team had outlined earlier, so clearly, most existing solutions weren't quite hitting the mark. Using this research, Edison Co. assembled a matrix to reflect what they'd found, along with some metrics for existing solution comparison. Expectations were more or less reinforced, with the Sunrise Alarm, an Oregon Scientific Clock, and a patent ranking highest. All of this research pointed to a key formula largely missing in today's market: motivating one to get out of bed, but not initially waking them up with sharp, blaring noises.